The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 37

The Sacramento Bee TUESDAY May 3 2005 COLUMNS E3 Ig TELEVISION E4 gg COMICS E6-E7 INSIDE Musicaiized 'Jukebox musicals' -some of them not so good are devounng pop rock acts Page E3 wwwsacbeecomlifestyle MEDIA savvy 'W By Freedom Lac Channel 13 eager to join news fray The upside to Viacom purchase of Channel 13 (KOVR): With the global media giant planning to pump serious cash into the CBS news-gathering operation the fight for revenue-generating news ratings in Sacramento should turn into an all-out brawl The downside: Mark Allen on two stations Allen of course is the manic anchor-reporter for Day the infotainment show on other Sacramento station UPN-31 (KMAX) While usually good for a few laughs (often at his own expense) heard from more than a few viewers who stand his shtick Anyway on Monday three days after Viacom closed on its $285 million deal to acquire KOVR Allen became a broadcasting double threat: He appeared as always on and then bum-rushed the KOVR news set during a bottom-of-the-hour update Holding a microphone adorned with both the KOVR and KMAX logos Allen literally leaped onto the screen and boasted that the new two-station combination the most powerful broadcasting empire in the area It was hard to tell who was more startled by arrival: morning news anchor Patti Lee or This Very Columnist who happened to be watching Channel 13 At least Lee had warning In a live segment that aired later on Day Sacramento Lee told Allen that while she knew he was coming onto' the set realize be that Count on KOVR under its new owners to make a lot of noise too with the sound of cash registers leading the way: KOVR-KMAXboss Bruno Cohen says Viacom plans to spend about $7 million on capital investments While a chunk of that will be used to upgrade West Sacramento compound which also will house the 140-person KMAX staff by the end of the year Cohen sounds most excited about all the TV-news toys on his shopping list looking at helicopters and satellite trucks and microwave gear and high-definition cameras all the news he says we think it can give us a competitive advantage look at a declaration sure to be music to the ears of newsroom staffers who have long produced one of the market's most impressive ratings-to-resources ratios That was especially true under the most recent owners the notoriously DU LAC PageE2 Whole Earth Festival at UC Davis celebrates educates By Stephanie Jucar BEE STAFF WRITER Join the Karma Patrol and groove by the Soular Stage at what many in the know are referring to as The Thing to Do in Davis this weekend Also known as the Whole Earth Festival a perennial favorite on the University of California Davis campus both for its good times and its good earth-friendly message Where else can you eat a vegan snack get a buck back for not throwing away the plate and then watch as the plate is washed and used again? Lee Walthall who has been going to the festival for more than 10 years is among those who miss it like Whole spontaneity color and Walthall says Davis something to go to The Jose Arguelles wanted to start an away from what he termed the impersonal lecture style Thirty-six years later the goal of the festival which begins Friday remains to educate aboutways to minimize waste conserve energy and reuse everyday household products Some other things changed: Because easy to spot tie-dye shirts and hemp necklaces among festival-goers during the three-day event some people have taken to calling it a fest Michael Nolan co-director of the Whole- Earth Festival mind idea of the intrinsic hippie who had long hair smoked pot and shower is a pretty uneducated Nolan says EARTH PageES Whole Earth Festival Music is a big and diverse part of the festival which this year has the theme The annual event starts at noon Friday and continues Saturday and Sunday festival is in the middle of our hometown has free music and all things great and exciting compared to everything else in Despite its bohemian feel the birth sprouted from conventional ways of teaching In 1969 then-UC Davis professor Still scarce on TV: Asian faces about seven weeks of primetime programming on ABC CBS NBC Fox UPN and the WB It looked at patterns based on gender occupations and relationships and whether an actor was multiracial or wholly of Asian descent Since 1999 Narasaki and other NAPALC leaders have been meeting with network executives to push for more Asian representation Regular on network diversity have been issued by a coalition including NAPALC and other civil rights groups There has been improvement in some areas but Latinos and ASLN back page E8 ByErinTexeira ASSOCIATED PRESS a rTTJhe King of is I set in a New York JL City borough where almost one in five residents is Asian American yet none of the CBS regular characters is Asian And of the dozens of regular characters in entire prime-time lineup not one is Asian At most other networks the situation is slightly better A study of Asian Americans in prime-time television released Monday shows that Asian Americans who make up 5 percent of the US population play 27 percent of regular characters It also shows that virtually no Asian actors are on situation comedies and the characters they play in dramas tend to have less depth than most regulars with minimal on-screen time and few romantic roles is still the place where people get to know other people from other cultures if they have regular contact with them in real said Karen Narasaki president of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium the Washington-based civil rights group that commissioned the study Asian Americans are absent it tends to reinforce the The study conducted by sociologists at UCLA examined Stay Snoopy The readers have spoken and to take a cue from Idol" Snoopy is safe You may recall that last week we asked whether we should consider saying farewell to Charlie Brown and the gang to make way for another comic strip The answer -in more than 1000 e-mails and hundreds of letters was a resounding There were some folks who would retire but more had a response like this one all the way from Texas consider carefully what you will be depnving the world of if you remove the gang from our lives After all we've already lost Charles Schulz Haven't we suffered Pam Dinsmore assistant managing editor descent plays Dr Nef a Rasgotra on.